Ben and Ciara: Into the Fire
by abbythyqueen
Summary: Ciara wakes up in the unexpected care of Ben, who is a known serial killer in her town. After crashing her bike, she starts to fall in love with Ben, who isn't the awful person everyone has made him out to be. Will Ben love her back? Where will their love go?
1. Chapter 1

***Ciara's Point of View***

I feel a sharp pain shoot through my leg as I roll onto my back to stare at the stars. My breath is racking through my body, quick and loud. My vision starts to fade in and out, but not before I notice a figure lean over me. The person pushes some hair out of my face, and the next thing I know I feel the sway of their steps as they walk with me in their arms. All I can do is let my eyes fall shut, and figure it all out later...

***Ben's Point of View***

I lay her on the bed, her fragile body barely making a dent in the mattress. I rush over to the counter, praying there's still water there from the last time I was here.

Oh, the last time I was here. I was so sick... Who was I? I barely recognize the person I was before, tying Abigail and Chad to the bed, taking her son... It's all too painful to even think about. I hate the person I was, I just want to start over, learn to love again. Learn to be a genuinely good person. I never have been a good person, I don't know how to start over. I've tried before, but I'm always going to be Ben Weston, and I've accepted that. I just wish Ben Weston wasn't a total psychopath.

She groaned quietly, I zoned out a little bit, but reality flooded back when I saw her face.

Her hair was matted together with blood, clearly she has a head wound of some sort. Her chin is scraped up, blood coming from her nose and a little out on the corner of her mouth. She isn't looking too good, I would be lying if I said she'd probably be fine. Her leg is obviously broken, I need to set the bone and fix the leg, that I can do. I know I can, I've done it before with my mom's arm after my dad broke it. I don't want to think about it anymore...

I get the water from the cabinet and grab the washcloth from the table next to me. I wet the cloth, and dab at the blood on her face. She looks so peaceful, I don't want to wake her up, but I can't fix her leg and put her through that pain if she doesn't know what I'm doing. After all, I am a triple-killer, four if you count Will, but I don't think that counts, does it?

I think it would be best to wait until morning to fix anything with Ciara, she looks so beautiful when she sleeps, at ease. I'll worry about it in the morning, until then I'll try to sleep myself, though I know I won't be able to.


	2. Chapter 2

***Ciara's Point of View***

I hear a clutter to my right. I open my eyes and shut them again, it feels too bright, but maybe its just because my eyes were shut for so long, it really is pretty dim in this room. I feel a soft mattress under my body, and start to wonder how I got here. The last thing I remember was soaring through the air off of my motorcycle and landing on my leg, twisting in a way that legs shouldn't twist. The rocks from the concrete dug into my palms as I tried to catch myself, and my head hit the pavement.

But somehow I ended up here, in some wooden structure I have never seen before. Fantastic, I've been kidnapped and raped while I was passed out. My legs are chopped off and about to be fed to me, great.

I'm sure the last one hasn't happened, but the first one is a probable situation.

I hear a door open to my right, I sit up a little, but the pain is too much for my leg and my arms are weak and wobbly, so I stay laying flat on my back. I crane my next to look and see who the figure is walking in front of me. Clearly it's a man, muscular and tall. But when he turns around I see something I wasn't prepared for.

In fact, Ben Weston was the last person I would have thought to take me. He's the last person who would ever carry Ciara Brady to a cabin in the woods, he's the last person who would stumble across my limp body on the side of the road. He's the last person who would wind up in the same place as me at the exact same time. In fact, he's the last person who would tuck me into bed with a bunch of blankets and let me sleep. That's practically what he did, There's two clean blankets on top of me and a pillow under my head, he let me sleep.

Besides my motorcycle injuries, I realized, I didn't have any other pain. He hasn't assaulted me, I would feel pain if he did.

Thank god.

I guess I've been forgetting to breathe, and the dumbfounded look on my face concerned him. He rushed over to my side and put his hand on my shoulder and said "Ciara, are you okay? You've been out for a while, I went out to get some food, if you're hungry."

I bat his hand away after I come to my senses. A serial killer just put his hand on my shoulder, and I smacked it away... The thought gives me chills.

"Like hell I'm going to eat anything that YOU give me!" I scream, a little louder than I anticipated, but the affect it was meant to give him was delivered, he seems unsettled now.

"Ciara listen to me. I know you know who I am, I know that you're probably freaking out right now, but I promise you I didn't do anything to your food. You really need to eat so you can find the strength to get better, you have a pretty gnarly leg break."

He wants me to get better? But why would he care what happens to anybody, he's a killer. Especially me, why would he care what happens to plain old Ciara Brady? Bratty, depressed, boring, victim Ciara Brady?

He pulled a chair up next to me, and after seeing my uncomfortableness I assume, he scooted the chair a little farther back. Why did he do that? It's almost as if he wants me to feel safe.

You know, sometimes the best reply is nothing at all. If I piss him off with anything I say, he definitely won't hesitate to slit my throat or something. So I turn away from him, biting my lip, and try to think of an escape plan.

***Ben's Point of View***

I scoot the chair back, and Ciara gives me a look. She looks from my eyes to my forehead down to my lips, and looks away, giving her lip a bite. This is going to be an really bad time to say this, but she looks so damn cute when she does that. I'm a little hurt that she's too scared to make eye contact with me, but under the circumstances I really can't blame her for feeling that way.

All of a sudden Ciara flails her arms up, reaching behind her to hang onto the headboard of the bed. She attempts to use her legs to get herself up, but she fails to do so, shouting in pain.

I get up and shush her, trying to move slowly so I don't scare her. "Ciara," I say, putting both of my hands in the air by my ears. "I really need to do something about your leg, okay? It isn't looking too good, and what you just did probably didn't help the injury at all.

"Don't touch me please, I mean it! Stay away from me," she said, her voice cracking. Tears start to fill her eyes, and all I want to do is hold her and make her feel okay...


	3. Chapter 3

***Ciara's Point of View***

He gave me a reassuring look, his eyes were shimmering, they looked glassy. He almost looked like he was about to start crying, but I highly doubt it. Allergies probably, after all we are in the woods in a dusty, old, almost burnt down cabin, so I wouldn't be surprised if he had to sneeze or something.

He put his hands down to his sides and sighed heavily, sitting down by my feet. I can't help squirming a little, after all, this whole situation could be potentially dangerous. Call me crazy or something, but it doesn't seem as unsafe as I thought it would. Not that I think about serial killers alone in a cabin with me in my free time, but in this town sometimes you think about unlikely scenarios because they tend to occur from time to time. And this is definitely not how I expected to feel. I mean, maybe it just hasn't struck me yet, but something about this isn't so awful. Usually when someone is concerned for me it just makes me tick, but when Ben says stuff about wanting to care for me, I don't cringe. I always have needed to be taken care of, that's just fact, but he's the only one who hasn't made me feel like a crazy person for needing it, you know?

He put his head in his hands and let out another sigh. He sort of looked like he was in physical pain, so I asked him if he was okay. Probably not a smart move.

"Hey are you okay?" I asked him, pushing myself painfully up to rest my back up against the pillow behind me.

"Wow Ciara. You have a broken leg and are bleeding from your skull due to a car wreck, and you're asking _me_ if _I'm_ okay? You're too good for your own good, Brady."

He turned his upper half to look at me and gave me a little smirk. It wasn't a creepy smile, but more of a friendly teasing kind of smile. The kind a friend would give you to make you feel safe.

"I'm not 'too good for my own good' _Weston,_ " I say, mocking him for calling me by my last name. "you just seem a little stressed, that's all. You dodged the question, are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Thanks for caring," he smiles at me, that damned smile. "but we really need to fix your leg or you could lose it. Okay?"

At this point, what do I really have to lose. After all, I can't be more hurt than I've already been. "Okay."

***Ben's Point of View***

"Thank you. Okay, I'm going to have to pop the bone back into place, and I would be lying if I said it wouldn't hurt like a bitch." I said, taking a deep breath. I really don't want to hurt her, but I have to do this.

"Oh, o-okay..." she muttered, more to herself than me. "My pain tolerance is pretty low, this is gonna suck, isn't it?" She looked up at me with her wide eyes, her gaze bouncing between both of my eyes, almost as if she were searching for answers behind them.

"Yeah, it might. But you, Ciara Brady, are a badass. You just survived a motorcycle crash, you can do this too." I say, trying to sound as confident and supportive as I can.

"Okay, then let's do this." She sucked in a deep breath, and gave me a nod.

I placed my hands on her thighs as she rested her head back and braced herself.

"3...2..." _SNAP!_


	4. Chapter 4

**Ciara's Point of View**

"Ouch!" I yelp as he snaps the bone back into place. My leg is pulsating and it really hurts, so bad that I ended up grabbing onto Ben's hand and squeezing to try and hold onto something other than the pain I'm feeling. It hadn't even crossed my mind that we were holding hands, I just needed to hold something and he was the closest thing to me.

Once the pain has stopped and I start to settle I realize that my leg hurts less than it did before Ben fixed it. Thank God, the pain was unbearable earlier and it was hard to focus. "Wow... That was..."

"Painful?" Ben finished for me. "Yeah, I'd imagine it would hurt if someone snapped a huge bone back into position. Are you alright now?" He said, sliding his thumb comfortingly over the back of my hand, making me remember that we were hand in hand. He didn't seem to be letting it go.

"Yeah I'm okay. Thank you for fixing my leg, it seriously means a lot." I said, looking up at him as he stood over me, slipping my hand out of his.

"Anytime, Ciara. I don't want you to be hurt and I'm always happy to take care of you." He seemed genuine when he said that, like he actually meant it.

Usually when people say that stuff to me they never mean it. The only person who has ever meant it is my mom, and she's my mom so of course she has to care. But none of my boyfriends ever cared for me, look at what Tripp did and look how Chase treated me. A shiver runs through my body just thinking about it.

"Ciara." Ben says, snapping me out of my trance.

"Sorry what?" I guess I must have zoned out.

"I asked you if you were cold?" He said, nodding towards the blanket slung over the chair of the desk.

"Oh, yeah, I guess I am a little bit." I said, biting my lip.

"Okay." Ben said.

 **Ben Point of View**

I turn around and reach for the blanket that has been thrown over the chair. Don't remember whose it was or how it got there, but I'm glad it's there because I don't want Ciara to be cold.

I hate seeing Ciara in pain. I really do. I know that she doesn't think much of me, I'm a disgusting serial killer to her and that's it. But I truly do care for her well being, I just wish that she could see that.

I turn around after grabbing the blanket and walk to the opposite side of the bed, the empty side that Ciara hasn't laid on. She looks up at me, a little bit of confusion and a little something else in her eyes, if you weren't a serial killer you could say it was the look of want in her eyes, but she could never want me.

I slowly sit down on the bed, and take my feet off of the floor so I can lay down next to her. I let out a sigh, and Ciara speaks.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked. She hasn't taken her eyes off of me since I sat down, probably because she wants to make sure I won't pull any fast moves on her.

"Just about how I ended up here," I say, because it's the truth. I really don't know how I ended up here, how I ended up being this person. It really does turn the wheels inside my head, I just don't understand.

"Oh," She says, pushing a piece of hair behind her ear. "Can I ask you something?"

Uh-oh. When people ask that it usually means something bad is about to come out of their mouth.

"Sure." I say anyways.

"Do you ever, I don't know... Regret what you did?"

I fall silent. I don't know how to explain what I live with on a daily basis to her after what I have done.

"Well, of course I regret what I did." I start, trying to find the words. "The memory of every one of their faces plays on a screen behind my eyes twenty four hours a day and it's torturous. I did what I did and I have to accept that, but it's hard when you have no idea who you were and you don't understand how you became what you became. I wish I had never done what I had done, but I did. And I hate myself every day for it."

She looks at me, back and forth between both of my eyes, biting the inside of her cheek. She looks away.

I wrap the blanket around her as she turns her head back to look at me.

"I understand what you mean," she says. How could she understand what I mean? She isn't an awful person like I am.

"What do you mean?" I ask, trying to milk more of the story from her, intrigued.

"There was some stuff that happened about three years ago that really stirred me as a person. I wasn't ever the same after it happened and I'm so scared that I never will be the same again."

What happened to Ciara?

"What happened?"

"I..." She drifts off. She looks away from me and down to her legs, the floor, the ceiling, anywhere other than my eyes. "If I tell you, you have to promise not to look at me differently. Okay?"

"Of course Ciara." I say, as reassuringly as I possibly can.

"Okay. When I was sixteen I had a step brother. His name was-" She stopped to take a deep breath. "His name was Chase. We did everything together. We loved each other, as siblings, I thought. But he felt something more. One night we came home from a party and..." She takes another breath. "He raped me, Ben. And I don't think I'll ever be the same."

I look at her in shock, and then she lays her head on my chest, saying "Please don't look at me different than you did yesterday..." And she falls asleep.

Soon after she dozes off, so do I. Dreaming of a future with a brown-headed, brown-eyed woman.


End file.
